Resurfacing but in Hamburg

Al

Only by chance of John R.'s reply to you, did I notice your question at the bottom of an email regarding 1914. You are the second person to ask me to expand on this item, so I am including him in my reply to you. It is apposite that I include him, as he is a trustee of funds of a membership organisation of which I am the Chair.

1914 is the year that the comfortable world of the Edwardians came finally to an end. Edward VII of course had died in 1910 (kicked the bucket in popular parlance). The European civil war finally broke out (generally referred to as the saintly Allies against the dastardly Boche) to all participants' disadvantage, save one, that being to the advantage of the elite of the USA.

When a serious miscalculation is made, eventually this has to be revisited and amends made. The passive tense implies that those miscalculating are still alive to revisit and amend. This is not always the case, but a factor I call the "social memory" carries it down over the years and while the memory of it may not be entirely reproduced in every detail, the main outlines are there - the enslavement of African people and their transportation to the Americas, the deceptive separation of children from their parents in the Manchester-Liverpool area by Dr. Barnardo's to be sent as domestic skivvies and unpaid cattle ranch workers to Australia in the 1950's are two examples, the latter recent, the former older.

Equally the miscalculations that led to the 1914 war have to be revisited and one of the signs that I have followed, in some cases with spectacularly positive monetary results, is the price of central London property and the price of gold expressed in paper money. Why these two indices? The need for people to have housing is one. The other is the monetary values that gold expressed over many years.

Just because the world has moved on since 1914 does not mean that basic elements have changed. They have not. Investors traded on margin in 1914, just as they do today. What interests me is finding particularly important signs that are worth keeping in mind when making investments. 1914 supplies two. An illuminating book that hints at what I am describing is Maynard Keynes's "The Economic Consequences of the Peace", published December 1919. Here he points out that "if you do xyz, then abc will follow". He is famous for taking a position in currencies (c. 1921), nearly bankrupting himself by staying in too long, then shorting the franc again and getting it right the second time around. After that, using gold as the price indicator, he landed up with $3million, which in today's money is about 150,000,000 pounds sterling. Not bad for a university lecturer who, between lectures, mainly traded on margin, like Sigops2 does. The Black Swan - still kipping.

Jack

ps. Although it is two years since Paul left us, I would still have enjoyed his commentary on today's markets.

Today's news on the BBC is that it is o.k. to extradite a young Englishman to the USA on the basis of an unequal treaty rights. Photographers outside the Tate Museum are being stopped from photographing the sunset as it might also include the Secret Service building, all under the Section 44 of the Terrorism Act while Guantanmo Detention centre is still in operation. You could not invent it if you tried.

You may wonder why the vote sign is on everyone of my blogs - well the issues I am writing about are all ones that can be expressed at the ballot box.

Today, I am writing about the collecting of DNA of innocent people. In the UK the culture has always been "Innocent until proven guilty". In Europe where so many of the new laws are being made, the culture is "Guilty until you can prove you are innocent".

There is also the idea "better a guilty person goes free, rather than an innocent person is imprisoned".

So my view is DNA is amazing and helpful, but keeping the information for more than six years is just another example of Big Brother at work and maybe even six years is six years too many. Innocent is innocent.

Well, 5 more soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and still the Labour Government continues with this unwinable war.

With the privatisation of arms procurement, there is a calculation that the Government must make - how many dead will the English public put up with and how long will they believe what the politicians tell them is the reason for being in Afghanistan. For the businessmen who have taken over the arms supply business, the people who pay the political parties to get these profitable enterprises, there is a further calculation to make - how much armour can they NOT supply against the number of soldiers killed because the armour is inadequate. This cost/benefit analysis is common where a business has to see what it can get away with, without losing too many customers.

But to return to the opening paragraph. A simple course in Renaisance literature would inform those interested, that no occupying force can remain forever in a country where they are not welcome. Machiavelli.

It appears that the final obstacles have been removed. First the Irish gave way, then the Poles and now the Czechs. Cameron has decided there will be no referendum should the Conservatives be returned to power.

Remembering how English Governments treated the Irish in the Potato Famine, the Poles in the 1945 Victory Parade and the Czechs at Munich, not much mercy could be expected from those quarters, but to be stabbed in the back by Cameron, surely that is a step too far.

The unelected bureaucrats of Brussels rule. The self-same who in all the time they have ruled have never been able to pass their annual accounts past their auditors. Surely there is a lesson and a hint there for all of us.

It's now the 2nd November, 2009 - I missed out posting my blog on 1st Nov, so today you get two opinions for one posting.

Today both politicals parties are jumping with both feet into the disgraceful imigration to the UK. As though they care a fig !!! They are both desperately scrambling to avoid the BNP vote at the next General Election. Both have sold out to the EU and we have to put up with fat cats up to their ears in cream. That's just today.

What about yesterday? Well we know that the BNP have the vote by the short and curlies - housing is the key to their success. Forget colour bars, they object to the Poles getting on the social housing ladder ahead of the 'indiginous' population, so it can't be colour. KISS - keep it simple stupid - it's housing, first, second and third. If you have politicians lining their pockets, who do they think they will trust - a party that says what is happening. Tough luck. Honesty pays in the end. Labour and Conservatives could learn a lesson from that idea.

Down to Brass Tacks

Just picked up a nice image to use for the upcoming elections which are the only defence against elected Dictatorships - you know, the ones that fiddle their expenses, flip their second homes and cry foul when a Freedom of Information enquiry is directed their way.

I found this on muckandbrass in Somerset - the bloke who knocked the councillors in Somerton off their cozy club perch.

See you at the Birkbeck Students' Union where they are in training for a by-election. The Students' Committee came up with three top headline attributes of Character and Skills an able Committee member must possess. They are Honesty, Integrity and Diversity. Every group will come up with their own list. These are the ones for the Birkbeck Students' Union. Come to the Hustings and ask the candidates for evidence of these headline attributes.